"Men may have us," said his Victoria, "as breeders and housekeepers, but the mistress is the root of all." This is not, as one might suppose, a confession of sin; for "Love is outside marriage, because love's too big to stay inside . . . don't you see that of itself it carries the one sanctity that may exist between men and women? That it cannot be bound because it is as light airs, imponderable; so fierce that all things it touches it burns, so sweet that whosoever has drunk shall ever more be thirsty." _Because a man soon tires of such burning sweetness, he must satisfy his thirst elsewhere._ Woman, indeed, he is annoyed to find, is still unable to "understand love in its neurotic moods; she cannot yet understand that a greater intensity might creep into passion if one _knew_ it to be transient, that one might love more urgently, with greater fierceness, if one _knew_ that soon the body, temple of that love, would fade, wither, die, then decay . . . that haste to live made living more intense." WHAT, THEN, IS THIS LOVE. IT IS A SEX-CONFLICT; wherein the man "has to make war, to conquer." The woman begs him "to hurt her, to set his imprint upon her"; even when "about to conquer" she must wear "the slave look." This is precisely the woman he also finds, more crudely phrased, in the "mean streets": "If yer lives alone nothing 'appens . . . stuck in the mud like. But when yer've got a 'usband, things 'as wot they calls zest . . . if 'e do come 'ome . . . p'r'aps 'e'll give yer one in the mouf. Variety, that's wot it is, variety. . . . He may lift his elbow a bit and all that, but anyhow 'e's a man." If he does _not_ come home, love means "waking up in the middle of the night and running about the room like a crazy thing because she'd dreamed he was with some other girl." In the afternoon it meant "feeling all soft and swoony just because he helped you into the 'bus by the elbow." More thoughtful or intelligent young ladies come "to think there's no such thing as a pure-minded girl." Marriage is "merely evidence that the girl has held out" and "only a dodge for getting rid of being in love." Mr. Hugh Walpole once very sensibly remarked that "people don't want to know what a young ass thinks about life if he can't tell a story." Perhaps, if such muddled ideas were only expressed by these solemn and very intellectual young men (who, however, can "tell a story"), we might be disposed to leave the matter in their hands and trust to time for their enlightening. But, unfortunately, the same false "new love" is about us everywhere. It is a commonplace to boys and girls, and has crept into the great majority of second-rate, easily read, novels published to-day. What does it really mean? How has it come about?